Enid Beaumont has worked in the field of intergovernmental relations for over 20
years in Washington, D.C. She has also taught about state and local government at Johns
Hopkins University and New York University. She held a variety of leadership positions in
New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Nicholas W. Fels (*) is a partner at Covington & Burling, where he has
practiced law since 1970. He is an expert in energy and regulatory matters. Mr. Fels has
been the President of the DC Appleseed Center since 1996.

John Hechinger, Sr.(*) is a fifth generation Washingtonian. He served as the
first Chair of the D.C. Council. Mr. Hechinger headed the Hechinger Company from 1958
until his retirement, and has been a supporter of and an active participant in numerous
civic and philanthropic organizations.

Jacquelyn Helm (*) is an attorney practicing in the District of Columbia and
Maryland who frequently represents clients before the D.C. Council. She served as a
consultant to the "Rivlin Commission." Under the late Chair John A. Wilson, Ms.
Helm served as Clerk and Counsel to the Committee on Finance and Revenue.

Anna Laitin is a Staff Associate at the DC Appleseed Center, where she serves on
several DC Appleseed Project Teams that analyze legislation and budgets enacted by the
D.C. Council.

Edward M. Levin (*) is Chief Counsel of the Economic Development Administration
of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He has served as counsel to local governments, drafted
legislation for the Illinois General Assembly, and been a Senior Fellow at the National
Governors' Association.

Philip Rosenthal is a lawyer at Covington & Burling, where he practices
intellectual property, communications, and environmental law. He has experience working in
a major municipal planning of fice.

Daniel M. Singer(*) is of counsel to Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver &
Jacobson, where he has practiced real estate law since 1958. He has served the District
pro bono for the past three years as Special Assistant Corporation Counsel.

Arthur W. Spengler was a staff member of the Council of Montgomery County,
Maryland for 19 years, serving as the staff director from 1983 until he left in 1991. He
was a member of the George Mason University public management and administration faculty
from 1992 until 1998. He is now completing work on his forthcoming book which examines the
use of collective bargaining by local government employees.

Joseph Sternlieb is the Deputy Director of the Downtown Business Improvement
District Corporations, where he oversees local government relations programs. Between 1993
and 1996, he was Staff Director of the D.C. Council's Committee on Economic Development,
and, from 1990-91, was an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.

Melody Webb (*), as an attorney for the Washington Legal Clinic for the
Homeless, advocated before the D.C. Council on human service issues. She also served as
executive director of a grassroots Southeast D.C. community organization advocating on
human services legislation and programs.

Sharon Webber is an attorney with the Federal Communications Commission. From
1991 to 1992, Ms. Webber clerked for the late Judge Harriett R. Taylor of the D.C.
Superior Court, where she researched and analyzed D.C. criminal law.

Roderic L. Woodson (*) is the former General Counsel of the D.C. Housing Finance
Agency and member of the staff of the Securities & Exchange Commission. Since 1979, he
has engaged a D.C. municipal law practice, including legislative representation before the
D.C. Council on taxation, telecommunications, and managed health care issues.

Joshua S. Wyner is Executive Director of the DC Appleseed Center. As an
attorney, he has worked on legislation introduced in, and has testified before, the D.C.
Council and Congress. Mr. Wyner also served in a legislative oversight capacity as a
Program Evaluator for the General Accounting Office from 1987 to 1989.

Current affiliations listed solely for the purposes of identification.
(*) Member of the DC Appleseed Center Board of Directors.

The DC Appleseed Center thanks the following for their generous contributions to
this project.

Members of the DC Appleseed Council Project Team (listed on the preceding page)
who collectively dedicated many hundreds of hours to convening as a group, researching
issues, formulating recommendations, and drafting this report.

Staff and members of the D.C. Council who responded to DC Appleseed's
questionnaire met with Project Team members, and provided available research materials.

Staff and council members of the 1I city councils surveyed for this report, each
of whom collected and provided extensive information related to his or her council's
operations.

Nine members of the public who participated in the DC Appleseed Project Team's
focus group and 16 advocates interviewed for this report who appear before the
Council regularly, each of whom spent between two or three hours imparting valuable
insights about the Council's operations.

The National League of Cities ("NLC") (and its President Donald Borut), for
providing helpful advice and arranging for several NLC members to meet with DC Appleseed
at NLC's March 1998 meeting in Washington, D.C.

James Kunde and John Krauss, of the University of Texas and Indiana University,
respectively, who provided illuminating information about configuring legislative space.

Rachel Tausend, a University of Michigan law student who conducted extensive
research into D.C. Council emergency legislation.

In the Home Rule Act of 1974, Congress established the District of Columbia Council as
an elected legislature with responsibility for passing laws, adopting an annual budget,
and overseeing operations of the executive branch and independent agencies. This broad
mandate ensures that the D.C. Council significantly affects virtually every aspect of the
District government, from law enforcement to public education to economic development
Until very recently, however, efforts to make the District government work better have
focused almost exclusively on executive and independent agencies. Little has been said
about how the operations of the D.C. Council might be improved.

For that reason, the DC Appleseed Center began, in late 1997, to examine the Council's
operations. To do so, we assembled a Project Team that included individuals knowledgeable
about the operations of the D.C. Council and legislatures elsewhere. The Project Team
gathered data on how other city councils operate; interviewed community members as well as
advocates who deal with the Council regularly; and studied the rules governing the
Council's operations.

We concluded that there are major shortcomings in the operations of the Council. If the
Council is to maintain its position as an equal branch of government, it must increase the
clarity of its legislation, communicate more productively with the public, perform more
meaningful oversight, and enhance Council members' access to expertise in virtually every
area of the Council's operations. Above all else, the Council must improve the
organization of its staff.

This report recommends changes that will enable the Council to work more effectively in
each of those operational areas. While others  including the Mayor, Congress, and
District residents  affect the way the Council operates, this report is about what
the Council can do on its own, under its existing authority, to fulfill its
responsibilities under the Home Rule Act. Highlights of DC Appleseed's recommendations are
summarized below, followed by a full listing of recommendations contained in this report.

A. Centralize Staffing

The fundamental conclusion of DC Appleseed's study is that inadequacies in the
Council's current staffing structure lie at the heart of many of the Council's operational
problems. The decentralized nature of the staffing structure  in which most staff
members are hired by, report to, and serve at the pleasure of individual members of the
Council  favors the creation of 13 different power centers, each with its own
agenda, as opposed to a work program designed to fulfill the Council's legislative
responsibilities. As a result, the Council's work product is highly variable and too often
poor in quality. Moreover, the staff's limited expertise in major subject areas and its
lack of necessary technical skills  such as legislative oversight, policy and fiscal
analysis, legislative research and drafting, and public information  constrain the
Council's ability to exercise its powers effectively.

The most important difference between the D.C. Council and the 11 other city councils
surveyed for this study is staffing structure.1 For example,
not one of these 11 councils follows the D.C. Council's practice of giving exclusive
authority to an individual member to hire and fire staff for committees that he or she
chairs. The D.C. Council has 41 committee staff positions  almost one-third of the
entire staff  each of which is under the sole control of the appointing member.

DC Appleseed believes that, unless the Council changes its staffing structure to focus
on the institutional needs of the legislative body, its operational problems will persist.
The Council has the authority to take a major step toward curing its problems by
establishing a merit-based, centralized staffing structure that does not rely on
patronage. DC Appleseed offers three basic recommendations for such a system:

Provide each Council member funding for four full-time equivalent ("FTE")
positions for his or her individual office, and provide four additional positions for the
office of the Council Chair (a total of 56 FTE positions).

Establish a central staff operation to meet the institutional needs of the Council, to
support the work programs of the Council and its committees, and to help each Council
member carry out his or her responsibilities as an elected representative. The central
staff  which would be located physically outside of any member's office  would
consist of 60 FTE positions, about half of all Council staff. These staff members would
work in four offices: Policy/Fiscal Analysis and Research; Legislative Oversight; General
Counsel; and Council Secretary. staff members would constitute a professionally trained
and qualified, non- partisan staff, many of whom would have incentives to remain in career
positions, although perhaps not with the full rights and protections of the merit system.

Abolish the existing committee staff structure and use the expanded central staff to
support the work of the Council committees.

The chart on the next page [below] depicts the difference between the Council's current
staffing and DC Appleseed's recommended structure.

By adopting such an approach, the Council would be able to improve each of its
functions: drafting and enacting legislation, holding public hearings, performing policy
and fiscal analysis, conducting legislative oversight, planning the legislative work
program, providing public information, and managing internal operations. Because a
centralized system would enable the full Council, its committees, and its members to have
equal access to information, research, and analysis, the Council as an institution would
be better equipped to respond to the public's needs and concerns. In turn, the public
would have access to better information, thereby enhancing public participation and
improving the public's understanding of the Council's policy decisions. Under the current,
decentralized approach, the quality of the Council's work is destined to remain, at best,
uneven.2

B. Improve the Standard Legislative Process

The Council's legislative process has a number of shortcomings, many of which can be
addressed by centralizing staff. In addition, however, the Council must change those
operating systems that make it difficult for Council members and the public to obtain
important documents  such as draft versions of a bill, fiscal impact statements, and
evaluations of a bill's legal and technical adequacy early enough in the process to enable
Council members and the public to consider effectively, and respond constructively to,
legislative proposals. DC Appleseed proposes several ways that the Council can provide
better and more timely information to Council members and the public, including:

requiring that each bill be reviewed for legal and technical sufficiency by the Office
of General Counsel before a Council committee votes on the bill, so that during
committee deliberations Council members have the information they need to ensure that
Council laws do not violate the legal rights of District residents;

preparing Fiscal Impact Statements ("FIS") earlier in the legislative process
prior to public hearings rather than after committee consideration  and making
FISs publicly available before public hearings, thereby enabling Council members and the
public to consider more thoroughly the effects of legislative proposals at an early stage
in the process; and

circulating a draft version of a bill to committee members at least two working days
before committee consideration (as opposed to the common practice of circulating a draft
only moments before a committee mark-up session) and routinely making such drafts
available to the public, thereby promoting more informed debate and better constructed
legislation.

C. Reduce the Use of the Emergency Legislative Process

The Home Rule Act allows legislation to be considered on an expedited basis under
"emergency circumstances," that is, when serious adverse consequences would
result from the delays associated with the standard legislative process. The D.C. Council
has employed its emergency powers far more frequently than anticipated in the Home Rule
Act, enacting almost half of all legislation in recent years under truncated
emergency procedures.

There are several causes for the Council's heavy reliance on the emergency legislative
process, not all created by the Council. In addition to reacting to genuine emergencies,
the Council uses the emergency legislative process to respond to: (1) emergencies caused
by a lengthy Congressional review process, which delays the effectiveness of
Council-enacted legislation for at least six weeks, and often for much longer; (2) poor
planning by the District's executive branch, which forecloses the Council's use of the
standard legislative process; and (3) poor planning by the Council, which uses the
emergency legislative process, sometimes repeatedly, in demonstrably avoidable situations.

Regardless of the cause, the effect is the same. Each time the emergency legislative
process is employed, public participation is severely limited because, typically, no
hearing is held and the legislation is enacted after a single reading (as opposed to two
readings at least 13 days apart). As a result, the public's views are neglected and the
Council may be left unaware of important facts and perspectives that could inform its
conclusions.

DC Appleseed recommends that the Council reduce its use of the emergency process by
taking more care to account for the Congressional review period when planning the
Council's legislative calendar. Specifically, the Council can decrease the number of
emergency enactments by: ( I ) considering the likely length of the Congressional review
period in its standard legislative planning process, and accommodating that review as
often as possible without resorting to use of the emergency process; and (2) employing the
emergency legislative process only when the hardship that would be caused by delays
inherent in the standard legislative process substantially outweighs the harm that would
be caused by excluding the public and limiting the time for Council deliberations.
Moreover, when the emergency legislative process is unavoidable, the Council should seek
at least limited public participation  through public hearings and otherwise.

D. Promote Meaningful Dialogue at Public Hearings

The Council's conduct of public hearings is in dire need of repair. Shortcomings
include insufficient and tardy public notice; inadequate public access to relevant
materials (sometimes including the bill itself); failure to begin hearings on time and to
explain to waiting witnesses when delayed hearings will commence; and a lack of discipline
in keeping the statements of both witnesses and Council members succinct and relevant to
the matter being considered. For public hearings to fulfill their central purposes of
allowing the Council to gather information and encouraging the public to participate in
legislative deliberations, DC Appleseed recommends several changes, including:

increasing public participation in the legislative process by providing an opportunity
for public hearing before enactment of each piece of standard legislation, and abolishing
"roundtables," which serve only to reduce the amount of public notice provided
before a hearing occurs;

ensuring that the public has an opportunity to participate meaningfully in the
legislative process by providing the public ( I ) adequate notice of a hearing through
various means (e.g., web site, newspapers), and (2) documents containing sufficient and
understandable information about the matters to be considered at the hearing, including
the full text of proposed legislation, a copy of the sections of the law that are to be
amended by proposed legislation, and a "plain language" summary of proposed
legislation; and

conducting public hearings in a more orderly manner to encourage public participation
and to promote useful exchanges of information and viewpoints, in particular by managing
witness testimony through uniform and rigorous enforcement of time limits on executive
branch witnesses, public witnesses, and Council members themselves.

The recommendations in this report (which are listed as an attachment to this Executive
Summary) provide a coherent plan for improving the D.C. Council's operations. While
adopting each recommendation independently will have a beneficial effect, collectively
they make even more sense. Most importantly, fundamental changes to the Council's staffing
structure are essential if the Council is to improve significantly legislation, budgets,
public hearings, oversight of executive and independent agencies, and public information.

Enacting changes is not enough to bring about reform; the Council must commit itself to
implement the changes and assure that back-sliding does not occur. For example, the
Council will fully realize the benefits of a centralized staff only if top-level managers
who are expert in policy and oversight are hired to direct the new policy and oversight
offices. Similarly, shortening time limits for witnesses and Council members at public
hearings will result in streamlined hearings only if the limits are enforced.

DC Appleseed strongly believes that the Council should maintain and, indeed, expand its
role as the central legislative body serving the District of Columbia, and as a co-equal
branch of government along side the executive and the courts. The recommendations in this
report provide the basis for significant operational reforms that will allow the Council
to better fulfill its responsibilities.

Recommendation 1. Provide each Council member funding for four FTEs for his or
her individual office, plus four additional positions for the office of the Council
Chair (a total of 56 FTE positions).

Recommendation 2. Expand the central staff to meat the institutional needs and
support the work programs of the Council and its committees, to help individual Council
members carry out their responsibilities as elected representatives, and to better serve
the public.

Recommendation 3. Create four central staff departments located outside of
Council members' individual offices, and allocate 60 full-time equivalent
("FTE") staff members among them as follows:

The Office of Policy/Fiscal Analysis and Research ( 18 FTEs) would include specialists
in budget and policy analysis as well as subject matter experts to assist the Council and
its committees in carrying out their legislative and budget responsibilities;

The Office of Legislative Oversight (six FTEs) would undertake program evaluations,
management reviews, investigations, and general oversight of the executive and independent
agencies;

The Office of the General Counsel ( 10 FTEs) would provide legislative research and
drafting services and provide legal advice; and,

The Office of the Council Secretary (26 FTEs) would provide administrative services
support, public information, and technological and logistical support.

Recommendation 4: Directors of the four departments would A. he hired by a
majority of Council members, with the intent that the positions would be long-term career
positions. Staff in each department would be hired, retained, and promoted by each
director on a merit-based personnel system.

Recommendation 5. Abolish the existing committee staff structure and use the
expanded central staff to support the work of the Council committees.

Recommendation 6. Require that all legislation be reviewed by the Office of
General Counsel before the public hearing notice is published to ensure that legislation
is in the proper form.

Recommendation 7: Require a review of the committee print by the Office of
General Counsel prior to the committee mark-up to ensure technical and legal sufficiency.

Recommendation 8: Adopt a germaneness rule for amendments offered at the
committee mark-up and at the legislative session.

Recommendation 9: Require that, for all non-consent legislation, a record be
made publicly available that reflects which Council members voted for and which voted
against legislation.

Recommendation 10: Codify all titles of the D.C. Code.

Recommendation 11: Require that, for all legislation, a fiscal impact statement
be prepared and made available at the time public hearing notice is provided.

Recommendation 12: Improve committee reports by assigning central staff to
assemble such reports according to a standard format, and including in such reports an
analysis of the impact the legislation may have on nongovernmental entities.

Recommendation 13: Require that draft committee reports and draft committee
prints be circulated to committee members and available to the public at least two working
days before the committee mark-up.

Recommendation 14: Make committee reports available to the public at a central
location within one calendar week after the committee mark-up of legislation.

Recommendation 15: Prepare and make publicly available for all "breakfast
meetings" (meetings that now occur immediately prior to legislative sessions) minutes
that describe, in general terms, any matter on the public agenda that was discussed by a
quorum of either a Council committee or the entire Council.

Recommendation 17: Minimize the use of the emergency legislative process by:

more rigorously defining the presence of emergency circumstances;

considering the likely length of the Congressional review period in the Council's
overall legislative planning process; and

using the emergency legislative process only if the hardship that will be caused by
delays inherent in the standard legislative process substantially outweighs the hardship
that will be caused by excluding the public and shortening the time for Council
deliberations through use of the emergency process.

Recommendation 18: When use of the emergency legislative process is
unavoidable, utilize as many mechanisms as possible to allow at least limited public
participation  including holding a public hearing.

Recommendation 19. Require that public hearings be held prior to enacting any
standard legislation. Hearings for which no witnesses sign up to testify by close of
business the day before the hearing should be consolidated and conducted at a pro forma
hearing by a hearing officer.

Recommendation 20. Strictly follow Council rules that provide for at least 15
days' public notice; and require that any shortening of the notice period be accompanied
by at least two days' advance notice with an explanation of good cause for shortening the
notice period.

Recommendation 21: Abolish "roundtables" because the only apparent
difference between a roundtable and a public hearing is that no public notice is required
for roundtables.

Recommendation 22. Establish a comprehensive citizen outreach strategy that not
only improves methods for providing notice of hearings, but includes additional ways of
increasing public awareness of, and involvement in, Council activities.

Recommendation 23. In addition to current methods for providing notice of public
hearings, provide notice in newspapers, on District cable television at regular intervals,
on the Council web site, through an e-mail distribution list, and on a recorded telephone
message.

Recommendation 24: Develop a pamphlet describing the public hearing process,
distribute it to witnesses at hearings, and make it available at public libraries, at the
Council's information office, and on the Council's web site.

Recommendation 25. Provide the following materials at the time of hearing
notice: (1) the full text of each bill, (2) copies of each section of existing law that
will be amended by the bill, (3) a "plain language" summary of the bill and (4)
a fiscal impact statement.

Recommendation 26. Require a quorum of two Council members to commence a
committee hearing and a quorum of one for a hearing to continue.

Recommendation 27. Commence hearings on time.

Recommendation 28: Manage witness testimony more effectively by strengthening
and enforcing rules on time limits and germaneness.

Recommendation 29: Recess to another day hearings that extend for more than four
hours.

Recommendation 30: Improve the manner of selecting which hearings are broadcast
on District cable television.

Recommendation 31: Expand information provided during District cable television
broadcasts of Council hearings by routinely identifying speakers and the subject and date
of the hearing.

Recommendation 32: Explore methods for better preserving the hearing record,
including written transcripts and video-taped recordings.

Under the Home Rule Act of 1974, the District of Columbia was established by Congress
as a separation of powers government with a "strong mayor" and an independent
Council sharing power and responsibility for governing the Nation's Capital. The office of
Mayor is "strong" in the sense that it has a role separate from the Council's
 for example, the Mayor appoints city officials, may veto legislation passed by the
Council, and plays a major role in fiscal decision making. The District of Columbia
Council, the focus of this report, has independent responsibilities as well  for
example, enacting legislation, adopting budgets, and conducting legislative oversight to
assure that the government operates effectively and efficiently. This distribution of
powers is similar to that found in our national and state governments, as well as in many
local governments across the country.

Over the past four years, a concerted effort has been made to reform operations of the
District's executive and independent agencies. The Financial Responsibility and Management
Assistance Authority ("Control Board") extensively studied the problems faced by
executive and independent agencies, and hired highly regarded managers to run several key
functions, including the public schools and the Police Department. And the Control Board
has recently returned much power to the locally-elected Mayor, who has promised further
executive branch reforms.

By contrast, the Council's internal operations have not been the subject of disciplined
scrutiny. As a co-equal branch of government, the Council must accept a significant share
of the responsibility for the problems that gave rise to the Control Board's creation.
Indeed, widespread criticisms of the Council's oversight, legislative research and
drafting, and budget analysis predate the Control Board's creation. Yet, while the Council
has made an effort to cooperate with the executive branch  for example, by working
with the Mayor and the Control Board to develop a consensus budget  the Council has
done little to improve its own operations. Ongoing reforms of the executive branch make
it, if anything, more important that the Council operate efficiently and effectively.

This report focuses on the Council's internal operations. It does not address broader
issues related to the Council's structure, such as whether Council members should be
elected to staggered terms, whether Council members should hold outside employment or
should serve full time, whether the Council Chair should be elected by Council members as
opposed to being elected directly by the public, and whether the current method of
electing five at-large members (including the Chair) and eight ward-based members best
serves the public interest. Nor does this report address the extent to which the Council's
actions should be subject to Congressional review.

These questions deserve examination. But, while structural reform requires
long-term examination and Congressional action (possibly including Charter amendments), operational
reforms can be undertaken immediately by the Council itself. Accordingly, a DC
Appleseed Center Project Team has, since December 1997, been examining the Council's
internal operations related to staffing, the standard and emergency legislative processes,
and public hearings.

The DC Appleseed Project Team sought archival information from the D.C. Council in
several areas of our research for this report. Surprising amounts of data were unavailable
because, it appears, the Council either does not collect the data and/or the data are not
kept at a central location. In light of our research experience, DC Appleseed notes the
lack of transparency regarding the D.C. Council's internal operations, and suggests that
the Council examine this issue further.

The recommendations in this report are based on research conducted over a ten-month
period (March-December 1998), including (1) a survey of 12 city councils, including the
D.C. Council, to elicit information about their practices relating to the operational
issues we examined;3 (2) meetings with D.C. Council members
and their staffs; (3) interviews of 16 business, labor, nonprofit, and citizen advocates
who spend much of their time meeting with and lobbying the D.C. Council; (4) a "focus
group" meeting of nine District residents, each of whom has testified at one or more
D.C. Council committee hearing, but none of whom has testified frequently; and (5)
research of D.C. law, Council Rules, and other available archival sources.

While the D.C. Council has responsibilities of both a state and a city legislature, its
operations and organization are much more like those of a city council. Like
other city councils, and unlike state legislatures, the D.C. Council has a relatively
small number of members, meets year-round, is unicameral, and represents a population of
less than one million people.4 Because this report examines
the operational aspects of the D.C. Council, the DC Appleseed Project Team chose to
compare the D.C. Council to other city councils  rather than to state legislatures.

The recommendations in this report cover four areas, each discussed in a separate
chapter. The opening chapter recommends substantial centralization of the Council's
staffing structure. Chapter 2 makes several recommendations for improving the Council's
current legislative process. Chapter 3 details the problems associated with, and the
changes needed to abate, the Council's overuse of the emergency legislative process.
Chapter 4 recommends reforms to the Council's public hearing process.5

The District's Mayor and the 13 members of the Council require significant support to
help them fulfill their respective roles in governing in an efficient manner. The mayor is
able to call upon the extensive resources of the executive branch of the government for
assistance. And, while no legislature should (or could) assemble a staff as broad and deep
as that available to the executive, the Council must be organized to ensure that it can
carry out its responsibilities in an effective and efficient manner.

The Council and its members should have available to them independent, timely, and
reliable information, research, and analysis needed to enact beneficial legislation, to
make sound fiscal decisions, and to perform meaningful oversight. Council members also
should have support that enables them to communicate with the public and to respond in a
timely manner to constituent inquiries and requests. Similarly, the public is entitled to
have access to information in a timely fashion and in an understandable format regarding
those matters being considered by the Council and its committees.

DC Appleseed has concluded that the D.C. Council's staff is not now configured to
provide the Council or the public with the expertise needed to fulfill each of these
functions. This chapter addresses the Council's current staffing practices, and recommends
changes in the composition and organization of the staff.

A legislature may organize its staff in a variety of ways. Two important
characteristics of staff are ( 1 ) the degree to which the management of the staff is
centralized, and (2) the terms of individual staff members employment.

In a totally centralized system  one extreme of the spectrum  there
is an institutional focus and staff are appointed by vote of the full council or by
its designated representative (such as a staff director). At the other extreme is a decentralized
structure that allows individual council members to appoint and remove staff
members at will. Of course, there are intermediate options. Rather than being appointed
either by the full council or an individual member, staff may be appointed by a committee
chair, the council chair, a majority of a committee, the unanimous vote of a committee, or
a majority of council members. A more centralized system is likely to foster a staff that
responds to the institutional needs and responsibilities of the council as a whole as
opposed to a more decentralized system which responds to the concerns and priorities of
individual council members.

Regarding the terms of employment, hiring decisions can be based on a system where an
individual "serves at the pleasure of" the appointing person or authority, or,
at the other extreme, can be selected and retained based on a merit system. In addition to
merit and patronage appointments, staff can be hired as term employees, contract
employees, or with limited merit system protections.

In general, legislative bodies will utilize some combination of these various staffing
models.

The District of Columbia Council  which employs 130 full-time equivalent
("FTE") positions with salaries totaling $4.9 million  currently
emphasizes a decentralized model in which about 3 out of every 4 FTE staff members are
hired by, and are accountable only to, individual members of the Council. The 41 FTE staff
members that most frequently perform policy and fiscal analysis, legislative research, and
legislative drafting are accountable solely to individual Council members: i. e., each
staff member reports to one of the chairs of the various Council committees. Individual
Council members also appoint the 54 FTE staff members who work in their offices. Only the
remaining 35 FTE positions are accountable to the full Council: 24 administrative services
staff in the Office of the Secretary; eight positions in the General Counsel's Office; and
three positions in the budget office.6

Because committee staff serve at the pleasure of the committee chair, staff loyalty
strongly favors the chair. Indeed, virtually every interviewee that spoke to DC
Appleseed's Project Team on the issue stated that the Council's budgeted allocation
between committee staff and individual members' office staff is rarely, if ever, followed
in practice. Many committee chairs reallocate a portion of their committee staff budgets
to pay the salaries of additional staff for their own offices. Moreover, neither members
of a committee who are not the chair nor other members of the Council are generally free
to draw directly on the expertise and support of committee staff absent permission of the
committee chair. That mentality is reinforced by the physical location of committee staff
offices within the suite of the committee chair, making access more difficult for other
Council members.

7.The D C. Register is a weekly publication of the D.C.
Office of Documents and Administrative Issuances. It contains all actions of the D.C.
Council as well as all administrative actions of the executive branch and independent
agencies. Except in the case of emergency rules, no rule or document of general
applicability and legal effect is effective until it is published in the Register. The
Register is available at D.C. Public Libraries, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions,
and by subscription at a cost of $150 per year.

The pernicious effects of this decentralized structure are myriad. DC Appleseed's
Project Team interviews uncovered broad criticism of virtually every institutional
function of the Council.

Policy expertise was described as at best variable, and at worst sorely lacking.
While some staff were described as very good, the prevailing view is that the overall
level of policy expertise among Council staff is quite low. On a 1 0-point scale, no one
interviewed rated policy expertise higher than five; several gave it a two or three.

Budget expertise was mentioned by several interviewees as particularly poor. The
prevailing view is that the existing three-person central budget staff is far too small to
do an adequate job of analyzing the operating budget  which is approximately $5
billion per year  and providing advice on fiscal matters. Accordingly, the bulk of
the budget work must necessarily be done, if at all, by committee staff members, few of
whom have the necessary expertise.

Legislative drafting is done primarily by committee staff, as opposed to the
General Counsel's Office, and was described as being of uneven quality. The consensus was
that, on average, drafting expertise is low and the quality of bills is inadequate 
imprecise, poorly researched, and poorly written. In addition, bills were described as
frequently varying from their intent, and often difficult to implement and/or enforce.
Beyond improved research and drafting, several interviewees noted the lack of plain
language drafting, inadequate legislative summaries, and the absence of section-by-section
analyses of bills.

Legislative histories often inadequately reflect the debate that took place. As a
whole, there is a concern over the wide variation between products, and an impression that
no training or standards exist to guide staff in preparing legislative histories.

Legislative oversight of executive and independent agency operations was roundly
criticized by interviewees as poor, frequently ad hoc, and too low a priority in
the Council's work program. The overall impression is that, when oversight is undertaken,
Council staff is frequently "out gunned" by lobbyists, interest groups, and the
executive. Further, the oversight performed was perceived as insufficiently rigorous, and
as sometimes not performed with sufficient distance from outside parties and the executive
to be objective.

Planning and scheduling the legislative work program was most frequently
described as non-existent. The perception is that the Council reacts to issues presented
to it, and rarely plans and executes its own initiatives over the longer term.

Public notification of hearings was described as inadequate, especially by the
members of the focus group who are not regular "Council watchers." The District
of Columbia Register ("D. C. Register")7was
deemed inaccessible by many, and unreliable by others. Notices were described as lacking
quality, timeliness, clarity, and uniformity. Because notice is prepared by staff of the
committee holding a hearing, the quality of notice depends on the committee staff.

Records management was described as decentralized, fragmented, and in need of
improvement. Records vary widely in quality and are dependent on the priorities of a
committee chair and/or the responsible staff member. Files and records were described as
frequently incomplete and sometimes difficult to obtain. Since some records maintenance is
the responsibility of the committees, official and individual member files are often
commingled. Gaining access to committee files when there has been a change in committee
chair was noted as being a particular problem.

Human resources management issues were cited as posing problems for an effective
staff operation. High turnover, a lack of career path opportunities, a lack of staff
development opportunities, a lack of proper supervision, and low salaries for some staff
were cited as significant concerns.

Overall, the comments of those interviewed by DC Appleseed's Project Team evidence a
highly variable work product that is too often poor in quality. There is little doubt that
the Council's decentralized staffing structure plays a major role in that outcome. For
example, as currently configured, the Council relies on committee staff, who are hired by
individual members, to perform the Council's public information function. That structure
virtually guarantees a fragmented approach with uneven results because Council members
place different relative values on the Council's public information function. A more
centralized public information function would allow the Council to develop a coherent
public outreach strategy using a variety of techniques, including more effective use of
the Council's web site and District cable television.

DC Appleseed proposes that the D.C. Council change the way it makes staffing decisions
by placing greater focus on the long-term institutional needs of the legislative branch of
the government. We offer three general recommendations:

Establish a central staff operation to meet the institutional needs and support the work
programs of the Council and its committees, to help individual Council members carry out
their responsibilities as elected representatives, and to better serve the public. The
central staff  who would be physically located outside of members' offices 
would consist of 60 full-time equivalent ("FTE") positions working in four
divisions: Policy/Fiscal Analysis and Research; Legislative Oversight; General Counsel;
and Council Secretary. These central staff members would be career appointees, although
perhaps not with the full rights and protections of the merit system.

Abolish the existing committee staff structure and use the aforementioned central staff
to support the work of the Council committees.

Provide each Council member funding for four FTE positions for his or her individual
office, plus four additional positions for the office of the Council Chair (a total ^, 56
FTE positions).

These recommendations can be implemented with no increase in fiscal resources. In fact
it is likely that modest budgetary savings may be realized due to a reduction in staff
from 130 to 1 16 under DC Appleseed's proposal.8 The
recommendations are discussed in greater detail below.

Three broad types of expertise are needed among staff members to assist the Council in
carrying out its on-going activities.

Constituent services staff, who help individual Council members fulfill their
community responsibilities and respond to their constituents.

Research and analysis staff, who provide policy and budget information and
analysis, legal research and legislative drafting, and legislative oversight. This staff
would include subject matter experts (for example, public education, facilities, Medicaid,
public safety, public works) as well as those who specialize in policy analysis, budget
and fiscal analysis, legislative research and drafting, legislative oversight, program
evaluation, contract review, and public information and outreach.

Administrative services staff, who maintain records, keep minutes, ensure that
deadlines and legal requirements are met, provide technological and logistical support,
publish documents, process correspondence and other materials, perform personnel
functions, and generally support the operation of the Council office.

While Council staff is currently assigned to fulfill each of these functions, most
staff members perform their responsibilities under the direction of individual Council
members. By centralizing staff, the Council can markedly improve its ability to exercise
its powers and meet its responsibilities.

Under DC Appleseed's proposal, the main functions served by individual Council member's
staff would be to provide constituent services, to respond to citizen inquiries and
requests in a timely manner, to represent the member at meetings and other forums, to
undertake special projects and/or initiatives for the member, and to manage the member's
office. Under our proposal, this staff would continue to serve at the pleasure of Council
members and would not be subject to the District's merit system.

The current level of four FTE positions for each D.C. Council member's office be
retained, although it is higher than in any of the other 11 cities surveyed by the DC
Appleseed Project Team. Ten of the 11 cities surveyed provide staff resources for the
individual offices of council members. The number of staff provided to each member in
those 10 cities ranges from one to three FTE positions, and the median provided per member
is two FTE positions.9

The District government differs from other local governments because it serves both
municipal and state functions. While it is not possible to quantify precisely the number
of additional staff members in each Council member's office needed to assist in this
regard, DC Appleseed recognizes that some additional staff is warranted. Four FTE
positions per Council member (one- third more than the highest number for any other city
in our survey) seems adequate to assist D.C. Council members in handling their unique
requirements. DC Appleseed further recommends that an aggregate annual budget of $150,000
(adjusted annually for inflation) be provided to each Council member for annual staff
salaries (not including benefits) in his or her office.. This would represent a modest
increase from the current level of $138,000 in staff salaries allocated for each member's
office.10

The current practice of having each member designate a defined number of staff to each
D.C. Council committee should be discontinued. Rather, the Council should create a
professionally trained and qualified, permanent cadre of nonpartisan staff to assist the
full Council, its committees, and individual members in carrying out the legislative
agenda.

This approach would be consistent with the staffing structures of the 11 other city
councils surveyed by the DC Appleseed Project Team. While each legislature surveyed has a
formalized committee structure and assigns the work of the council to a committee before
the full council takes final action, only the D.C. Council has an organizational structure
which, at least on paper, assigns staff to work solely on the functions of Council
committees (41 FTE positions for its ten standing committees). None of the other 11 cities
surveyed follows this practice; in each of these jurisdictions, staff work for committees
is provided by a central staff that works for the full council and is under the leadership
of a staff director.11

DC Appleseed recommends that the D.C. Council's entire central staff (including
professional, clerical, and support staff) be organized into four offices 
Policy/Fiscal Analysis and Research; Legislative Oversight; General Counsel; and Council
Secretary. Each would be headed by a director appointed by a majority of Council
members. The intent is that the directors would serve in long-term, professionally
qualified career positions, and would serve at the pleasure of the Council as a whole.
Each director would hire the professionally qualified staff for his or her office with
logistical assistance from the Council's personnel staff. Some central staff would be
under the District's merit system, while others would be hired for certain and defined
terms. Appropriate career paths and salary ladders should be created to help limit
turnover, and salaries should be competitive both within the government and in the region.

To staff the four offices, DC Appleseed suggests a complement of 60 FTE positions to be
allocated as follows: 18 positions (about one-third) for the Office of Policy/Fiscal
Analysis and Research; six positions (one tenth) for the Office of Legislative Oversight;
10 positions (one sixth of the central staff) for the Office of General Counsel; and 26
positions (about 40 percent) for the Office of the Council Secretary. Staff allocations in
each office include professional and support staff. Staff in each office would have
clearly delineated responsibilities as described below:

Office of Policy/Fiscal Analysis arid Research staff would include specialists
in budget and policy analysis as well as subject matter experts (similar to staff employed
by the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service). One member of
this staff would assist the Council and its committees, working with the respective
chairs, in managing the flow of the legislative work program and in scheduling the various
agendas. A major responsibility of this staff would be to assist the Council in carrying
out its responsibilities regarding budget and fiscal matters. For some staff this would be
a year round undertaking  issues for future research and analysis would be
identified during a given year's budget review, thereby establishing an agenda for the
months leading up to the subsequent year's budget review. Other responsibilities would
include preparing fiscal impact statements to accompany proposed legislation; conducting
policy research and analysis in consultation with the General Counsel's legislative
drafting staff; and working with legislative oversight staff in the conduct of their
evaluations and reviews.

Office of Legislative Oversight staff would undertake program evaluations,
management reviews, investigations, and general oversight of executive and independent
agencies for the Council (similar to staff employed by the General Accounting Office).
When establishing its work program, this staff should coordinate closely with the other
legislative branch offices, including the Auditor,12 and with
appropriate staff in in the executive branch, including the Inspector General.13 The focus of the oversight staff should not be to micro-manage
executive and independent agencies, but rather to examine broadly whether programs and
agencies are efficient and effective. If it operates well, this office will be able to
offer constructive critiques to executive and independent agency managers.

Office of General Counsel staff would provide legislative research and drafting
services and provide legal advice.

Office of the Council Secretary staff would provide administrative services
support  provide minutes, publish documents, process correspondence, and provide the
technological and logistical support for the Council office (purchasing, payroll,
personnel, information systems, etc.). Within this office would be an expert in records
management to centralize the maintenance of all Council and committee records. There also
would be an addition of three public information and outreach staff to develop a coherent
strategy for communicating with the citizens of the District. Included in this effort
would be a media relations program which includes the activities currently carried out by
the press secretary. Additional responsibilities would include organizing and
administering the public hearing process (including provision of public notice,
preparation of advertising, witness lists, etc.), providing legislative information
services, and managing the web site and District cable television.

For a more centralized staffing system to succeed, it will be critical that (1) the
Council perform a broad search for central office directors who are expert in managing the
functions for which they will be responsible, (2) the central office directors and their
staffs work as a team to assist the Council, the committees, and the individual members,
(3) the office directors consult closely among themselves, as well as with the Council and
committee chairs and individual Council members, (4) central staff expertise be shared so
that each Council member has access to central staff resources, and (5) work programs be
coordinated so that, for example, the oversight schedule supports the legislative process
and adequate resources are dedicated to fiscal analysis during budget season.

In implementing these recommendations, clear and enforceable safeguards to ensure
confidentiality must also be put in place. When seeking the assistance and advice of
central staff, each Council member must be able to talk freely and in confidence with
members of the central staff, secure in the expectation that the substance of confidential
discussions will not be passed on to other members, the executive, or the public at large.
This principle must be clearly understood by all concerned, and there must be severe
consequences for any staff member who breaches confidentiality.

In addition, the citizens of the District and all concerned with the operations of the
Council must have a high level of trust in Council members and Council employees.
Safeguards must be in place to ensure that staff is not subject to any improper influence
or the appearance of improper influence. Therefore, in addition to current laws and
regulations governing the conduct of Council members,14
appropriate conflict-of-interest and ethics statutes to govern the professional and
political activities of Council staff must be in place and strictly enforced. Rules for
employees should address such matters as gifts, outside employment, nepotism,
participation in activities in which a staff member may have an economic interest,
participation in partisan political activities, and using the prestige of one's office for
personal gain.

Centralizing staff operations offers numerous advantages, which, together, can
strengthen the D.C. Council as a separate and equal branch of the government. As revealed
by the DC Appleseed Project Team's interviews and observations, the Council is currently
lacking adequate professional expertise not only in fiscal matters, but in evaluation and
oversight, policy analysis, legislative drafting and research, preparation of legislative
histories, planning and scheduling, outreach and public information, records management,
and technology management. By improving the support available to the Council in these
areas, the legislative branch of government will be strengthened.

By centralizing staff, the Council can better ensure quality and consistency of staff
assistance. Under the current system, in which each of the ten committee chairs
independently hires the analytical, research, and legislative drafting staff, the skill
levels of those assigned to work on the Council's complex and diverse legislative agenda
vary greatly based upon the priorities of different Council members. Thus, if a committee
chair is more interested in hiring staff based on patronage than merit, the quality of
work for the entire Council in the areas covered by that committee can be adversely
affected.

Alternatively, if staff is managed centrally, the Council as an institution will not
have to rely on individual committee chairs to hire staff. Instead, because they will be
responsible to the entire Council, staff directors should have an incentive to meet the
needs of the Council and its committees by hiring the best available experts in various
subject matters and disciplines (including legislative research and drafting, analysis,
policy analysis, program evaluation, and oversight). Council members should have an
incentive to hire directors with expertise in managing both a staff and a legislative work
program in an efficient and effective manner.

The benefits of a centralized staff can be gleaned from the experience of Congress,
which employs independent experts at the Congressional Budget Office ("CBO"),
the General Accounting Office (`'GAO"), and the Congressional Research Service
("CRS"). For example, CBO provides a permanent, nonpartisan, professional staff
to supply Congress assistance in three basic areas: developing a plan for the budget,
staying within the budget, and considering issues of budget and economic policy.15 And, as scholars have observed, CBO was to provide a bastion
of neutral analysis, loyal to the institution of Congress, rather than to committees or
parties. Its director is appointed jointly ... for a four year term.... [CBO] won a
reputation for both competence and neutrality. [CBO] reminds us that our institutions can
work well.... Its technical work has been credible, albeit not always popular.16

The budget reform of 1974 moderately increased the level of centralization and
coordination, but equally important, it provided a professional staff of budgeteers to
help Congress make budget policies.17

The D.C. Council cannot afford, and does not require, the deep and wide-ranging
expertise provided by CBO, GAO, and CRS. However, by centralizing its staff, the Council
will provide itself greater access to the enhanced level of expertise needed to serve
public needs without relying so heavily on information generated by lobbyists and other
interested parties or by the District's executive branch.

A centralized staff also has the benefit of equalizing access by Council members to
information, research, and analysis on all items on the legislative agenda. Under the
current system, as a practical matter, committee chairs control the work programs of their
committee staffs. Moreover, because some committee chairs reallocate a portion of their
committee staff budgets for additional individual office committees often have even less
access to the expertise necessary to accomplish the committee's agenda.18

In contrast, under a central staff model, a Council member would request policy
research and analysis, drafting, oversight, etc. from the central staff directors, who
would assign staff to fulfill those requests. Because the staff directors would be
accountable to the full Council, they would have an incentive to respond fairly and in a
timely fashion.

According to most of those interviewed by the DC Appleseed Project Team, legislation
introduced by Council members varies dramatically in quality. This variability exists not
only among bills introduced by different Council members, but also among bills introduced
by a single Council member in a single session. This uneven quality in legislative
drafting can be attributed to the fact that, within the Council, bills are not
consistently drafted by staff in any one of office, but, instead, each bill may be drafted
by any of the following: committee staff or the Council member's personal staff  few
of whom have expertise in legislative research and drafting  or staff in the General
Counsel's office.19 By having so many people draft
legislation, the Council virtually guarantees an inconsistent work product.

According to those interviewed by the DC Appleseed Project Team, the quality of
committee reports that accompany legislation vary greatly not only from committee to
committee, but among reports prepared by the same committee. Most often, the
section-by-section analysis portion of the report is merely a recitation  often
verbatim  of the legislative language. Rarely does it truly explain the substance or
policy goals of the proposed legislation. The "impact on existing law" portion
of the report is frequently limited to a listing of the laws that are amended by the
legislation and a generalized description of the changes being made. The statement of the
legislation's purpose and effect rarely provides an exposition of the history of an issue,
alternatives considered or tried, or a concise rationale of the need for and intent of the
legislation. Too often, this portion of the report simply asserts  without
supporting evidence  several conclusions favoring enactment of the legislation.

The Council can improve the quality of legislation and legislative reports by having a
greater amount of legislation drafted in the first instance by staff in the General
Counsel's office.. DC Appleseed recommends an increase of two FTE positions in the General
Counsel's office to provide additional drafting assistance.

By centralizing staff, the Council can increase staff specialization, which should
improve the efficiency of the Council's legislative drafting, fiscal, and oversight
functions. Under the current system, a Council member who wishes to pursue an initiative
that is not favored by the chair of the relevant committee will generally have two
choices: abandon the issue, or have his or her individual staff conduct the research,
regardless of whether the staff has the relevant expertise. On the other hand, under a
centralized staff model, research on a given issue would be assigned to the staff member
or members with the greatest expertise in that issue area, regardless of which Council
member initiated the request. The staff will be likely to have the basic understanding
needed to research and analyze the issue and thereby provide a soundly-based response in a
shorter period of time.

Moreover, a centralized staff structure would foster greater efficiency when two
Council members are interested in related issues that arise in different committees'
subject areas. For example, if the Council is simultaneously considering oversight of
contracts let to repair public school buildings and contracts let to repair other
government-owned buildings, a single central staff member may be best suited to handle
both inquiries. Indeed, a central policy staff would be expected to have at least one
person well versed in government contract law, and, perhaps, someone with expertise in
building renovation as well (a person with an engineering background would likely be a
member of the policy analysis staff). Under the current committee-based staffing system,
public school oversight is handled by staff for the Committee on Education, Libraries, and
Recreation, while the oversight of repairs to other District buildings would likely be
handled by staff of either the Committee on Public Works and the Environment or the
Committee on Government Operations. Because these committee staff work for different
members, and are physically located in different offices, it is unlikely that staff of one
committee would coordinate its work program with the work of the other committee. A
centralized staff structure would help minimize such inefficiencies.

The current staffing structure inhibits the Council's ability to meet certain
responsibilities in a coherent manner. For example, consideration and analysis of the
Mayor's annual budget proposal is fragmented among the staffs of all of the committees.
Such a system hinders the Council's ability to analyze tradeoffs between programs assigned
to different committees, such as whether the level of funding for human services should be
increased or decreased in relation to the budget for public works. Instead, the current
system encourages tradeoffs within the programs under the jurisdiction of a single
committee, such as whether increased residential trash collection should be funded through
a reduction in road repair. Because the vast majority of staff members who analyze the
various sections of the budget report to individual committee chairs, there is very
limited centralized information and advice on which the Council can draw as it attempts to
consider the budget as a coherent whole.20

Under a centralized staffing system, on the other hand, budget analysis would be
performed by a staff accessible to every Council member on an equal basis. Council members
would have access to the expertise necessary to understand not only the areas of the
budget within the jurisdiction of the committee they may chair, but also other areas of
the budget that may be of concern or interest to the member. Centralization of budget
information and analysis will enable the Council to consider the budget holistically.

Similarly, a centralized staffing structure will provide Council members access to
professional oversight and policy staff who, collectively, would have broad knowledge of
legislative issues. As a result, each Council member will be able to gain a better
understanding of legislation outside of the purview of his or her own committee. Such
understanding should serve to improve the Council's ability to consider government
operations in a comprehensive manner.

Currently, each committee chair sets the legislative agenda for his or her committee.
When committee agendas overlap, the chairs may hold joint hearings on a particular
subject.21 But such collaborations occur only on an ad hoc basis, and are not the
result of a Council-wide work plan based explicitly on Council priorities. A
well-configured centralized staffing structure would include staff dedicated to helping
the Council and its committees plan and manage their work program over a period of time,
allowing the Council and its committees to focus energy over the longer term on areas of
concern to the entire Council.

A prime example of the improved planning that would flow from centralization can be
found in the area of legislative oversight of executive and independent agency operations.
Presently, the Council performs oversight on an ad hoc basis. Whether oversight is
done well (or done at all) in a particular subject area depends upon whether the Council
member chairing the relevant committee deems oversight important. The result is that
oversight is generally performed only after a government function becomes so seriously
dysfunctional that the public and press become aware of and outspoken concerning that
dysfunction. While there is surely a need to perform oversight under such circumstances,
the Council also must increase its capacity (1) to anticipate problems and perform
oversight on issues before they reach crisis proportions, and (2) to conduct oversight as
a means of gathering information to evaluate planned legislative proposals.

By centralizing oversight staff, the Council can ensure that oversight priorities are
established over a longer period of time. For example, the Council may be interested in
evaluating a program's effectiveness so that it can decide whether the program should be
expanded, modified, or eliminated. Without improved planning, it will remain very
difficult the Council to dedicate adequate resources to fulfill its oversight and other
responsibilities. A centralized staff charged with ensuring that such long-range work
plans are devised and implemented would greatly improve the Council's oversight function.

Under current practices, the committee staffs play a central role in providing
information to the public and Council members. Committee staff are responsible for
disseminating notices of public hearings and are a main source of documents relating to
legislation under consideration by the Council or a committee. For example, the draft
committee print of a bill scheduled for markup is generally available to the public, if at
all, only through committee staff, and even Council members often do not receive the draft
committee print until they arrive at a mark-up session.

The Council should accept as mandatory providing the general public and Council members
full and timely access to understandable information about matters being considered by the
Council and its committees. A well-staffed public information office within the Office of
the Secretary should have the time and resources to consider such matters. This should
include a regular analysis of the locations where, and the processes through which, the
public is most likely to gain access to information, as well as the potential for
employing new and existing technologies to disseminate information. Such analysis is
unlikely to occur under the current system.

Centralizing the Council's operations will also increase the Council's ability to
attract and retain a highly qualified, stable cadre of professional staff members to
assist the Council, its committees, and its members. Those interviewed by the DC Appleseed
Project Team stressed that the problems of inadequate expertise and poor institutional
knowledge flow, in part, from the high rate of turnover among Council staff. The
decentralized nature of the Council's staffing structure is a major contributor to these
problems. Because so many Council staff are hired by individual members, staff jobs depend
upon the reelection of the Council members that appointed them and not solely on the
quality of staff work. While some Council members retain existing committee they are first
given a chairmanship, the norm is for Council members to hire their own committee staff.

Moreover, the current staffing structure stifles the Council's ability to create
performance incentives through staff advancement. At present, approximately three-fourths
of all staff members report to individual Council members. Thus, for most staff, the
opportunity for advancement is limited to the possibility of moving from one position to
another within the office of the member for whom they work. Such opportunities are further
limited by the fact that ( I ) each Council member, on average, employs only eight staff
members,22 and (2) staff members in each office have vastly
disparate responsibilities. Hence, there is little room for Council members to create
career paths with accompanying opportunities for promotion.

By contrast, under a centralized system, analysts, attorneys, and administrative staff
would be hired at varying levels of experience and training, which would allow for
promotion opportunities. By including appropriate career paths and salary ladders, a
centralized staffing model provides incentives for able employees to remain in career
positions. Salaries should be established to be competitive both within the government and
in the region. These incentives should help reduce staff turnover, which in turn should
improve continuity and institutional memory among Council staff.23

As described in Chapter 4 of this report, no one person has the responsibility of
ensuring that necessary records of Council and committee proceedings and the history of
enacted legislation are assembled and maintained. DC Appleseed's Project Team understands
that, while certain records (such as committee reports) are stored at a central location,
those records are sometimes incomplete, and the missing information resides only in
committee offices, if it exists at all. Compounding the problem, when a committee
chairmanship is transferred to a new chair, committee files are often not transferred to a
central location and are often in such disarray as to be unusable. Moreover, files and
documents are not always provided to the Office of Legislative Services in a timely
fashion, making it difficult public to research legislative histories.

A well-run records management office within the Office of the Secretary should be
created to establish a records management program and to implement a system to store and
maintain all files related to Council and committee proceedings, legislation, and internal
operations. Such an office, properly managed, would enable the public and Council members
to find legislative documents at a single location, not only after legislation is enacted,
but during the legislative process itself.

A centralized staff structure would increase the Council's opportunity to develop
appropriate institutional relationships with the Mayor and specific offices within the
executive branch. Several persons interviewed by DC Appleseed's Project Team noted that,
in years past, the Council met with the executive branch to discuss legislative proposals
before they were enacted. Specifically, representatives of the Council members who
sponsored legislation would meet with members of the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental
Relations and appropriate executive-department personnel to discuss each branch's
perspective on specific legislative proposals. These meetings no longer routinely take
place. By assigning a central staff member to this function, the Council could ensure that
proposals are commented upon by representatives of the executive offices that will
implement the legislation.

As the national capital, Washington and the surrounding region is home to an
extraordinary wealth of expertise on issues that the Council deals with in governing the
District. Council staff should be encouraged to work with local universities and nonprofit
agencies (such as the National League of Cities and the International City/County
Management Association) to establish internships at the Council, as well as to take
advantage of the expertise of professors and staff of these institutions. By centralizing
the policy and research functions and thereby developing and retaining a higher degree of
staff expertise, the Council will likely foster a greater number of long- term
relationships with institutions that have particular contributions to offer the Council in
carrying out its responsibilities.

1. While the D.C. Council has responsibilities of both a state and a
city legislature, DC Appleseed chose to compare the D.C. Council to other city councils
(rather than state legislatures) because the Council's operations  the
subject of this report  are much more like those of a city council Those
similarities are detailed in Appendix I to the report.

2. We do not, of course, pass judgment on individual members of the
Council or its staff because we have not performed the kind of case-by-case review that
would qualify us to draw such conclusions.

3. The 11 other cities  chosen by a methodology described in
Appendix I  are Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Columbus, Denver, Indianapolis,
Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle.

4. Consider this summary profile of state legislatures: more than 90%
have more than 75 members; 70% meet, on average, for four months or less pa year while
only four state legislatures meet for longer than eight months per year; all are bicameral
other than Nebraska; and the median state population is 3.8 million and the mean 5.3
million. See Appendix I - Methodology, Chart II. By contrast, the legislatures in
the cities surveyed for this report have fewer than 30 members; meet for 10 months or more
per year (Baltimore, the sole exception, meets for an average of 7.5 months per year); are
unicameral; and represent populations of less than 800,000. See Appendix I -
Methodology, Chart I.

5. Appendix I details our methodology and approach; Appendix II is a
copy of the questionnaire used in the 12-city survey; Appendix III provides a summary of
our focus group with District residents; and Appendix IV provides an overview of the
District's legislative process.

6. While it is clear that some of the 35 central FTE positions are
covered by the District's merit personnel system, we were unable to determine the exact
number because we were able to gather only appropriated  as opposed to actual 
staffing figures.

7.The D C. Register is a weekly publication of the D.C.
Office of Documents and Administrative Issuances. It contains all actions of the D.C.
Council as well as all administrative actions of the executive branch and independent
agencies. Except in the case of emergency rules, no rule or document of general
applicability and legal effect is effective until it is published in the Register. The
Register is available at D.C. Public Libraries, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions,
and by subscription at a cost of $150 per year.

8. The D.C. Council has a substantially larger staff and budget than
any of the 11 other cities surveyed by DC Appleseed. we did not draw direct staffing
comparisons because the D.C. Council  unlike the 11 other cities surveyed  has
both state and city responsibilities. Nonetheless, DC Appleseed's recommendations 
which are based on a review of the Council's needs  would result in a 10% reduction
from the current staffing level. we note that even with this reduction, the D.C. Council's
staff would be almost 60 percent larger than the next highest level of any city council
surveyed (the Milwaukee City Council has a staff of 72).

9. Only the DC Council provides 4 FTE positions per member (a total of
54 positions); three cities provide 3 FTE; four provide 2 FTE; and three provide fewer
than 2 FTE. Indianapolis provides no staff for individual member offices.

10. The Council further reports that each office is provided $6,885
annually for "non personal services," such as furniture and travel.

11. All cities, including the District of Columbia, have staff that
work for the full council, although there is great variation in the level of support. For
example, in Minneapolis the executive branch provides staffing for the legislative branch,
and only two people work directly for the full council to provide limited administrative
support (reception, etc.). In contrast, Seattle and Milwaukee have 43 and 49 FTE to
support the legislative work program for the full council. In the District, as noted
earlier, 35 FTE work for the full Council.

12. The District of Columbia Auditor is appointed by and reports to
the D.C. Council, and is charged with conducting annual audits of D.C. government accounts
and operations. D.C. CODE §47-117 (1987). Because the Auditor's budget is independent of
the Council's, the Auditor's office is not reviewed in this report.

13. The Inspector General's office is part of the executive branch of
government, and is charged with conducting 'independent" audits of D.C. government
accounts and operations. D.C. CODE §1182.8.

16. Aaron Wildavsky and Naomi Caiden, New Politics of the Budgetary
Process, third edition. New York: Addison Wesley Longrnan, Inc. (1997) at 76.

17. Irene Rubin, The Politics of Public Budgeting, third
edition. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., (1997) at 103.

18. One interviewee cited a former committee chair who shifted much of
the budget allocated to hire staff for his committee into salaries for staff in the
Council member's individual office in addition to the Council member's office staff
allocation of four FTEs. The DC Appleseed Project Team has been told by Council members,
staff, and others that this practice is widespread, even though it appears to violate
Council Rule 273, which states that staff salaries are "subject to appropriations and
positions allocated by the Council." In reality, current practice inappropriately
allows individual Council members to decide what amount of Council resources will be
dedicated to each substantive area.

19. Some bills introduced by the Council are drafted by lobbyists for
business, labor, and other interest groups. The general perception among those interviewed
is that, while legislation drafted by lobbyists is often technically well drafted, the
Council does not pay adequate attention to the details of legislation to ensure that (even
after it goes through the legislative process) it serves the public interest rather than
the narrow interest of the drafters.

20. Existing central budget staff members (3 FTEs) are, however, able
to provide general information concerning D.C. government spending.

21. For example, based on a shared concern by committee chairs over
the operations of the Metropolitan Police Department, the Judiciary and Government
Operations Committees held joint oversight hearings in 1998.

22. The exceptions are the Chair of the Committee on Local, Regional,
and Federal Affairs (who has authority to hire only six FTE positions) the Council Chair
(who has authority to hire ten FTE positions) and the two Council members without
committee assignments (who may hire only four FTEs).

23 The DC Appleseed Project Team's research reveals that Council staff
salaries are, on average, $39,248 which is at the median of staff salaries in the 11 other
city legislatures surveyed ($38,854). However, the DC Appleseed Project Team did not
analyze how the distribution of salaries among D.C. Council staff compares to salary
distributions in other city Councils. Moreover, DC Appleseed did not compare Council staff
salaries to salaries in the District's executive branch.

Each D.C. Council member is paid an annual salary ($80,605) that is higher than the
salary paid to members of any other council surveyed, the highest of which (Seattle) pays
each member $75,505 per year. Recognizing that while D.C. Council members are defined by
law as part-time, many work full time, in part, because they are both city and state
legislators. Accordingly, DC Appleseed does not believe that members' salaries should
necessarily be lowered. We do believe, however, that, given the relatively high salaries
of D.C. Council members, citizens can fairly demand superior performance, including
attention to operational issues such as those raised in this report.